an eyebrow noncommittally. “It’s a small town. I feel better when I know where the ticking bomb is.” Smiling, he tipped his head. “We’ll grab a coffee soon.”
“That’d be nice.”
Nick followed Sara outside and Bree moved a few steps closer to Lilah. “Who was he, an old boyfriend or something?” True to the perspective of youth, she emphasized “old.” Lilah could have pointed out that she was only twenty-nine, but since she felt ancient these days, she buried her ego.
“Come on,” she said, “we’ll go to Sara’s, and I’ll feed you so you won’t have to complain to the child welfare people.”
Chapter Three
A quick tour of Sara’s kitchen revealed that peanut butter cups, nacho cheese tortilla chips, two jars of bean dip and several cereal boxes—all offering a toy inside—were her idea of “food.”
“That’s not dinner!” Bree protested, echoing Lilah’s sentiments exactly, so they got back in the car and headed to the only restaurant in town.
Ernie’s Diner was dotted with locals when they entered at half past five. Lilah had changed clothes and repaired her makeup quite deliberately. She was now thoroughly overdressed as she led her charge to a booth all the way in the back of the restaurant.
After scanning the pink plastic menu, she decided on a dinner salad for a dollar ninety-five, because before they’d left the house she’d tallied her checkbook again, hoping she’d added it up incorrectly the first four times. They weren’t broke—yet—but she needed a job and she needed it fast.
“I have to go to the restroom. Will you order for me? Thousand Island on the side,” she told Bree as she scooted off the cracked and taped leather of the aged booth.
Bree shrugged, her nose already buried in a tattered copy of The Hobbit.
With a deep breath for courage, Lilah picked her way to the front of the restaurant on high-heeled white-and-gold sandals, the hem of a filmy white sundress swirling around her knees. Shaking back her hair, which she’d brushed and left loose, she reached into her large straw bag for the gift she’d brought Ernie, the owner of the diner—a signed and framed headshot of George Clooney. She’d been supplying Ernie with autographed studio photos for years. He’d hung them all around the restaurant.
The pictures were easy enough to acquire; Lilah simply wrote a letter requesting an autographed eight-by-ten—like any other fan. To Ernie and his regular customers, however, the Hollywood memorabilia was proof that Lilah had hit the big time. They believed she knew all the stars whose photos she acquired. Lilah of course had never disabused them of the idea. Now she hoped to make Ernie’s unmerited awe work in her favor.
In addition to the money left in her account, there remained a couple thousand dollars in a savings account Grace had left for Bree. Lilah was determined not to touch that money, no matter what. Bree needed to know there was something from her mother. Grace had been so worried. Lilah had performed her best acting job to date when she’d tried to assure her friend that their finances were fine. In fact, she’d lost her waitressing job for taking too much time off when Grace was ill. Lying to a dying woman—Lilah wasn’t sure whether she’d committed her first act of mercy or sunk to a new low. The devoted mother had died assuming there was more.
For years Lilah had lied about her acting credits, simply by claiming that she had some good ones. She hoped that if she told Ernie she wanted a temporary waitress position so she could “research a role for the theater,” he might hire her, and she wouldn’t have to admit she was almost thirty, that her bank account ran on fumes and that by most standards, especially her own, she was a big fat flop.
Reaching the cash register, Lilah glanced around the restaurant, spotting Mrs. Kay, the organist at Kalamoose First Baptist Church, along with several diners who were strangers to her, and she saw a waitress she didn’t recognize…but no Ernie.
The waitress, a ringer for a young Natalie Wood, approached the register. Lilah wondered vaguely if Ernie had hired the girl knowing her looks would be good for business. Fresh and glowing with no sign yet of age or disillusionment. Lilah remembered when people had hired her based on youth and beauty alone.
Feeling a lifetime older than the flawless child before her, she fought to dredge up the smile that had made her Miss Kalamoose Creamery 1990-1992 and asked to see Ernie.
The girl stared at her blankly. “Ernie?” Wrinkling her pert nose, she cocked her head. “Um, a guy named Elmer comes in around five most nights for the chicken-fried steak. Do you mean him?”
Gorgeous, Lilah amended her first impression, but thick as a post. “Nooo, I mean Ernie the owner,” she clarified, aiming her thumb over her shoulder. “The one whose name is on the sign out front.”
For a long moment, the girl gazed at Lilah with a little furrow between her dark eyebrows. “I didn’t know there was a real Ernie. I thought it was just a name. You know, like Burger King.”
“You mean, like Carl’s Junior?”
“Is he real, too?”
“I think so. Anyway, I know Ernie is real, so is he around? In the back, perhaps?”
Suddenly the furrow cleared. “Oh, yeah, the owner’s in back.” A bell dinged in the kitchen. “That’s my order. I’ve gotta go. Back in a sec.” She disappeared before Lilah could remind her to send Ernie out.
Sighing, Lilah turned and walked to the wall of publicity photos Ernie had hung by the front door. Gazing idly at the pictures while she waited, she leaned forward suddenly as she recognized the first picture she’d ever sent home. This one wasn’t a headshot; it was a reprint of a photo taken on the set of the only movie she’d ever done: Attack Girls From Planet Venus. The snapshot showed her and several other wanna-be starlets in scanty, strategically ripped silver attire. Lilah stood on the far right. Beneath her likeness she had written To Ernie, I’ll always love your milk shakes best. XOXO, Lilah. Then she’d drawn a star instead of her last name.
Lilah shook her head. She didn’t draw stars anymore. No one ever asked for her autograph, anyway.
“I didn’t see that movie. The locals tell me it’s a classic.”
The deep voice, low and slow and sardonic, made Lilah’s heart jump to her throat. She whirled around to find Gus standing mere inches behind her. Looming several inches taller and wider than she, he gazed over her head at the photograph then down again at her and raised an eyebrow with perfect irony.
“Was there a sequel?”
His presence seemed to surround Lilah, to press in on her, though there was a good foot and a half of air between them.
She stood dry-mouthed and thick-tongued as Gus’s prairie-winter eyes lowered slowly from the photo to her face. Not sure what to expect from him, she felt a thin, sharp stab of anxiety as their gazes met and held. In all the years she’d known him, she had never stood this close without feeling the almost electric energy that pulsed between them. It had been there ever since they’d both hit puberty. Today was no different.
When she’d pictured him over the years—and she’d be lying through her teeth to claim that she hadn’t—she had sometimes imagined him still in love with her and unable to mask the longing and youthful hunger that smoldered in his gaze.
